So, I have been working on cleaning up my credit report- it was not that bad, but I have nothing good that shows up either... I am about to pay off a student loan, and I recently got a couple of things deleted off...What would be the best bet to get some good credit on there?
Kudos to you for making an effort to clean up your credit report and build your credit score. The effort will be well worth your time. Do you happen to have a spouse, family member, or close friend with good credit who would be willing to add you as an authorized user on one of their credit cards in good standing? That's arguably the fastest way to establish some positive credit without actually securing a card in your own name. Also, here's a short article from our Learning Center that provides some quick tips on building credit from scratch: How to Start Building Credit from Scratch.
That's a great suggestion but there is a vicious dark side to that idea and the same dark side exists with all such authorized user schemes, purchased or not. Let us say that someone having excellent credit lets you become an authorized user. That does indeed jumpstart your credit but if you use that credit line to establish credit of your own through obtaining credit cards or loans and you later default the lender can get suspicious about how such a high score was obtained without any credit history previous to that. In other words how did you jump from nothing to 680 or above overnight? It soon becomes apparent to the lender that they relied on "planted" or misleading information in making their decision to loan. That might lead to a federal criminal prosecution for providing false or misleading information to a lender which carries a two year sentence and a criminal history for the rest of your life. I know of a former poster to this forum from Utah who got a 2 year sentence for providing false and misleading information to a lender. That didn't give him a new criminal record anyway since he already had a long and colorful criminal record previous to that and apparently hasn't learned his lessons to this day. And don't secured credit cards carry the same high interest rates and terms that any other credit cards carry? I don't know about that but it seems to me that they might. Paying high interest rates and other fees don't seem like an attractive proposition to me. Of all the possible ways to build new credit the one that seems to stand out above all others is the 3 banks trick that has been around for almost 100 years now and still works just fine. Great credit references from 3 different banks obtained in just over 4 months time without any credit references and at a very low cost, usually less than $20. Do that 3 times over the course of a year, increasing the amount borrowed by a substantial amount each time would end up proving that you can pay off large loans very quickly and reliably and you won't have to play around with the sick little low limit hight interest rate cards most people have to pay dearly for to started. On top of that you will come out at the end with a nice savings account that you can build on over time. Building a savings account first is simply a better way to go. If you have to borrow from your savings account you should plan to repay that loan plus interest at something like 25 to 30 percent per month interest or more. Borrow $100 from your savings account and put $130 to $150 back into savings as soon as possible will keep you in the black and teach you very quickly just how much that interest paid out to others will hurt. You will have to do better budgeting until that money plus interest is paid back.
Other options you may want to think about is the secured credit card route. They can be costly but if you go your bank that you keep your checking and savings they are usually more likely to offer you a card especially if you can leverage some collarteral. After a shorter period of time you then may be on the right tract provided the company reports to the credit bureau and provided that you have been paying your bill on time. No part of the post above or anything posted by us herein is to be considered legal advice. Confidential Credit Solutions is not a law firm. If you seek legal advice, contact a licensed attorney within your jurisdiction. No part of our website link, including clicking upon it, constitutes an offer of any kind or an advertisement to seek an agreement of any kind. The website link placement herein is for informational purposes exclusively.
Interesting! But why take the chance you speak of and risk getting hit hard by the banks when you can simply follow my suggestion and do it almost for free? One of the core concepts here is to keep from spending money if at all possible and learn how to repair your own credit then rebuild your own credit for free. By the way, I'd like to compliment you on that credit repair website you have there. Very nice looking.
